The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

Be aware of scams if you’re recovering from the effects of Hurricane Dorian

When a natural disaster occurs, scammers are right there, adapting their fraudulent techniques to the latest emergency.

If you suffered damage from Hurricane Dorian, or if you’re looking for ways to help those in need, you can get information at ftc.gov/weatheremergencies. It offers ways to spot the scams that often follow disasters.

After a storm like Hurricane Dorian, scammers often target people who need to get their homes cleaned up or repaired, or find a new place to rent, said by Colleen Tressler, consumer education specialist for the Federal Trade Commission. Scammers may pose as a government official, asking for financial information or money to apply for aid that you can request on your own for free. They often demand that you pay by gift card, prepaid card, or wiring money. That’s always a scam, Tressler said.

Google-YouTube $170 million settlement for violations of kids’ privacy law too weak, critics say

Google and its subsidiary YouTube agreed to pay a record $170 million Wednesday to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General’s Office that YouTube illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

The settlement requires Google and YouTube to pay $136 million to the FTC and $34 million to New York for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule. The $136 million penalty is the largest amount the FTC has gotten in a COPPA case since the law was enacted in 1998.

In a lawsuit filed against the companies, the agencies allege that YouTube violated the COPPA Rule by collecting personal information – identifiers that track users across the Internet – from viewers of child-directed channels, without notifying parents and getting their consent. YouTube earned millions of dollars by using the identifiers – cookies – to deliver targeted ads to viewers, according to the lawsuit.

Use caution when donating to victims of Hurricane Dorian

When a natural disaster occurs, scammers appear everywhere quickly to try to get your money.

“The destruction that Hurricane Dorian wreaked across the Bahamas is nothing short of a true humanitarian crisis – entire communities underwater, homes completely destroyed, and lives tragically lost,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “We anxiously wait for Dorian to pass through the southeast United States and hope for minimal impact and that communities remain safe.”

James urged people who want to support those who have been impacted to be prudent when assessing what organizations to donate to.

Attorneys general and telecommunications companies join to stop robocalls

Fifty-one attorneys general announced an agreement Thursday with 12 telecommunications providers on a set of principles intended to limit and prevent robocalls. The providers have agreed to incorporate these principles into their business practices.

This agreement comes from the work of a group of attorneys general who in 2018 formed the Robocall Technologies Working Group. The group collaborated with telecommunication providers to make it more difficult for scammers to use robocall technologies to intrude on and defraud consumers.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have joined this agreement with the following telecommunication companies: AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated, Frontier, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon, and Windstream.

Broker in pension scam, who settles with CFPB and Arkansas, unable to pay most of repayment to consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB and the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office filed a proposed settlement Wednesday with a securities broker for allegedly misrepresenting high-interest loans to veterans and other consumers in exchange for future rights to their pensions.

Andrew Gamber and his three companies – Voyager Financial Group, BAIC Inc., and SoBell Corp. – would be banned from the industry if a judge approves the proposed settlement.

The CFPB and the state agency alleged in a lawsuit that Gamber and his companies misrepresented that the contracts were valid when they were actually illegal loans, that the product wasn’t a high-interest loan, and when consumers would receive their funds. They also failed to inform consumers of the interest rate on the loan, according to the lawsuit.

CFPB settles its predatory lending lawsuit against ITT Educational Services

Photo: Dwight Burdette

ITT Educational Services Inc. has agreed to a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB to resolve the agency’s lawsuit, which alleges that ITT engaged in predatory lending practices in its private loan program.

The CFPB’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in 2014, alleges that ITT helped to create private loan programs for students at ITT Technical Institute, the school run by ITT until it filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2016. The CFPB alleges that ITT improperly induced students to take out those loans to pay the tuition amounts not covered by loans or other tuition assistance from the federal government. The agency’s complaint also alleges that ITT knew that the student borrowers didn’t understand the terms and conditions of the loans and couldn’t afford them, resulting in high default rates.

Can you really just go to the Equifax website and get $125?

Although dozens of people have said on Facebook that you can easily get the $125 from the Equifax data breach settlement, the answer is no, you can’t. When you go to the Equifax Data Breach Settlement website to the File a Claim page, you need to list what activities you did related to the breach that cost you money. For up to 10 hours, you don’t need to provide any documentation.

You’ll be asked if you want money or free credit monitoring. If you request money, you have to say that you have credit monitoring for at least six months.

I listed time spent freezing my credit reports, which I did earlier this year. So, we’ll see if I get the $125 or a lesser amount.

What to do about Capital One’s gigantic data breach

A massive data theft at Capital One exposed personal information, in some cases including Social Security numbers, of more than 100 million people. It’s the largest amount of data stolen from any bank to date. 

Consumers should assume that their Social Security number has been exposed between this breach and breaches of other major companies’ databases, such as Equifax’s, said Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG’s federal consumer program senior director. U.S. PIRG recommends all Americans should freeze their credit reports for free to safeguard their financial security. Click on the following link for details on how to do this: https://uspirg.org/feature/usp/freeze-your-credit. 

“The Capital One breach impacting 100 million Americans is the largest-known breach of a bank,” said Mierzwinski. “The hacker stole people’s credit applications which help make up their financial DNA – and in some cases included Social Security numbers. This information could be used to steal our identities or drain our finances.”

Baby boomers offer wonderful, wise, and witty words

It’s summer and despite the heat in many areas baby boomers are offering words of wisdom.

They’re writing about:

• Why you should do what makes you happy today.
• A summer day at the beach.
• Why you need to keep practicing if you want to get better.
• The cons of moving to Florida.
• Techniques that marketers, politicians, and others use to manipulate people to pad their bank accounts.
• Facebook's $5 billion settlement for consumer privacy lapses and Expedia's $570 million settlement for negligence that led to a massive data breach.

Laurie Stone of Musings, Rants & Scribbles reports on these articles in the Best of Boomer Blogs #607. Click here to get the links to the articles. And be sure to join in the conversations. Boomer bloggers love to hear from readers.

Copyright 2019, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

Facebook to pay $5 billion for privacy lapses, but consumer groups say changes the company agreed to won’t solve its privacy problems

Facebook will pay a record-breaking $5 billion penalty, and submit to new restrictions and a modified corporate structure that will hold the company accountable for the decisions it makes about its users’ privacy, to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.

The settlement requires Facebook to conduct a massive overhaul of its consumer privacy practices. The settlement also makes major changes to Facebook’s operations, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg no longer has sole control over privacy.

“Despite repeated promises to its billions of users worldwide that they could control how their personal information is shared, Facebook undermined consumers’ choices,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons. “The magnitude of the $5 billion penalty and sweeping conduct relief are unprecedented in the history of the FTC. The relief is designed not only to punish future violations but, more importantly, to change Facebook’s entire privacy culture to decrease the likelihood of continued violations.”